Shortly after landing this job, I began my reign of terror as a writer, pushing the envelope to write a weekly strategy column while occasionally slinging mud, getting people to start to read the Neutral Ground website for columns, tournament reports, and other information as the newborn site grew into a popular website.
I’ll cut to the chase; although some of you were miffed with my last draft article – which is allowed – I decided to continue on this path. While others with more impressive resumes engaged in the debate of what’s hot and what’s not in the CBS format, I felt that I could still serve a more mundane purpose on the ground, showing what pans out in practice rather than arguing theory.
The problem, of course, is that Sensei’s Divining Top
is in all of the best decks! It’s in the fake best
deck (Tooth and Nail), the second best deck
(Kuroda-style Red), and the actual best deck (UrzaTron
Blue). No matter how good the players designing these
decks, they all put the terrible Top in to make sure
they don’t tap their mana efficiently so as to gain to
much of an advantage over their fellows. As near as I
can tell, the difference between horrible Tooth and
Nail and the actually good and successful decks is the
ability to get rid of the useless Sensei’s Divining
Top so that you no longer have to look at it.
When we left off yesterday, I was fifteen, stupid, and had just enough money to be a danger to myself. Money doesn’t make you smart though, so I stopped buying packs after my first trade-rape experience…
In general, these days blocks tend to be focused on such different themes that they aren’t really very compatible with each other. Using Onslaught for an example, there were no Cycling cards and very few Goblins in Odyssey and Mirrodin, the two sets that were legal when Onslaught was and thus nearly every card in those decks came from either Onslaught block or from the basic set. In Type One however, blocks never rotate out. This gives deckbuilders the ability to plumb older sets for cards which can work along with a block mechanic. Some blocks have been more successful than others because of this effect.
How big of a change will hit us on August 20? Let’s start off looking at each color, covering their gains and losses. Then we’ll look at the biggest changes overall, see how some of the popular archetypes are affected, and maybe even come up with a meaningful answer.
Today StarCityGames.com welcomes yet another new writer to the family, this time in the form of former Dutch National champion Rogier Maaten. Rogier’s first article deconstructs the Black/White spirit deck in full Kamigawa Block Draft. Back in CCB, this was one of the best archetypes around, but can it still perform with a new set added to the mix? What do you have to do now in order to win with this deck, and what does the pick order for Saviors look like? Enquiring minds want to know!
To a lot of you, I’m probably an unknown quantity; I’m a writer who’s recently appeared “on the scene” here on StarCityGames.com on the Premium side, seemingly out of nowhere if you didn’t already know the story. For those of you who don’t know me or my personal back story, that seems like the place to start.
As far as this week goes, as I promised I wanted to look at making budget versions of some of the decks that are clearly the king of the hill of Kamigawa Block Constructed, starting with Black Hand.
Today StarCityGames.com welcomes World Champion Julien Nuijten to our growing family of world class writers. In his debut article, Julien exposes his new readers to the best archetype in full Kamigawa Block draft: Red/Green.
Zvi says goodbye to StarCityGames.com with a list of how to make your Magic: the Gathering gaming experiences better than they have ever been before. Looking to become a dealer, a Pro Tour player, or something in between? Zvi shares his thoughts on each of these including his opinion as to what the most important element in any gamer’s life happens to be.
Hello again and welcome to the final daily for the week! This has (surprisingly) been a very fun set of articles to do, while at the same time, getting my sense of urgency alive and kicking again. For this daily we’ll start with something a bit light-hearted: Penguins.
As of this writing, my stack is a little over 330 cards with my target amount being three hundred fifty. The question remains, how do you build a stack of cards of that size and avoid using absolute crap?
It was the aftermath of PT: London. I’d placed an uninspiring 3-3 record, mirroring my performance in my previous two tours. I stood, pint in hand, as my Magic-naive brother barraged Teddy Cardgame with questions. "Ted," he asked, slurring slightly, "Is Craig any good at Magic?"
Ted paused, a little too long. "He could be," came the reply.
Is it true? Yes it is! Due to demand, we’ve put our buylist back online. If you’ve been waiting to sell or trade us cards, read on!
Also inside: Find out about the two newest positions open on the StarCityGames.com staff, see just how many Unhinged lands and foils were added to inventory this week, take a look at the newest Ravnica information, and check out the hottest cards in Magic.
